Pokémon Go developer Niantic has had another dig at third-party apps, saying that by blocking such apps, roll out to South America became possible.
This time writing on a blog post, Niantic blamed the delayed Latin American release on “aggressive efforts by third parties to access our servers outside of the Pokémon Go game client and our terms of service.”
On the official Facebook page Niantic said third-party apps were slowing down developments, justifying why Pokévision and other apps were blocked. In the blog post Niantic displayed a chart, showing the drop in server load since third-party apps were banned.
Niantic are making it clear where a lot of the server problems stating “seemingly innocuous sites and apps actually hurt our ability to deliver the game to new and existing players.” CEO John Hanke goes on referring to the chart claiming it, “shows the drop in server resources consumed when we blocked scrapers. Freeing those resources allowed us to proceed with the Latin America launch.”
Servers have seemingly stabilised with no outages since the update that neutered third-party apps. The blog post goes on to blame servers for sucking up resources, hindering new features in the game, “developers have to spend time controlling this problem vs. building new features,” Hanke continued. More features have been taken out than added, with the Pokémon near-tracker taken out as Niantic deemed it “confusing” and did not “meet underlying product goals.”
According to Hanke, tools used to scrape data from the servers (used by third-party apps) are being used as a “platforms for bots and cheating which negatively impact all Trainers.”
It’s clear here the Pokémon Go developer do not want anyone messing with their game, a perfectly legitimate right. But the developer now has a lot to prove, with features needing to be reinstated and ensuring servers do not crash coming into the first weekend of the Latin American release.
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